So far, 2012 is proving to be a “breakout year” for residential real estate despite ongoing problems for financing new-home construction, a national housing economist said Monday in Denver.

Home sales so far this year are up 8 percent nationally and in a range of 10 percent to 12 percent in Colorado compared to last year, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.

“I’m encouraged that this is a sustaining situation,” Yun said in a presentation to the Colorado Association of Realtors.

Yun warned that a market imbalance could arise because buyer interest is outpacing the supply of available homes.

“Builders have the will to produce, but they just can’t obtain the financing,” Yun said.

Permits for new residential construction in Colorado through August totalled 15,091. That represents the third consecutive year of increases. But construction still lags far behind the past decade’s high of 55,007 in 2001.

Both Yun and Tom Clark, chief executive officer of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., warned that modest economic growth could be imperiled by across-the-board federal spending cuts scheduled to take place Jan. 2 unless Congress passes a new budget that would achieve at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Clark said the potential budget cuts represent “a meat ax hanging over a number of our employees” in sectors such as clean tech, bioscience and federal laboratories in Colorado.

Metro Denver’s real estate market has been strengthened by a wave of job expansions and corporate headquarters relocations, Clark said.

He added that the metro area is ranked as the nation’s top migration destination for people in the 25-to-34 age group.

AirPods have become a rare public misstep for Apple. In September, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller hailed the earbuds as the entree to a wireless future, with seamless connection to an iPhone and a five-hour battery life.

The brokerage industry’s self-regulator has asked employees fired by Wells Fargo & Co. and stripped of their securities registrations to come forward if they have concerns over their treatment, the latest sign of growing scrutiny on the bank.

Ford Motor Co. is going ahead with plans to move small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico despite President-elect Donald Trump’s recent threats to impose tariffs on companies that move work abroad.